Folks from Dixie by Paul Laurence Dunbar is the first book of short fiction by one of American literature's earliest great black authors. More than anything else, this 1898 book is about race consciousness, as Dunbar examines black and white roles. On the surface, it is a series of stories about contented, loyal blacks and peaceful race relations; however within the collection, there is a subtle yet consistent examination of the morés of race relations beneath the surface of the plantation myth.